Counter-Currents
  • Private Events
  • T&C
  • Contact
  • Webzine
  • About
  • Books
  • Podcasts
  • Donate
  • Paywall
  • Crypto
  • Mailing List
  • RSS
    • Main feed
    • Podcast feed
    • Videos feed
    • Comments feed
  • Advertise

LEVEL2

  • Webzine
  • About
  • Books
  • Podcasts
  • Donate
  • Paywall
  • Crypto
  • Mailing List
  • RSS
    • Main feed
    • Podcast feed
    • Videos feed
    • Comments feed
  • Advertise
  • Recent posts

    • Silicon Valley’s Anti-White Racial Dysgenics Program

      Jason Kessler

      4

    • The Silent Plague of Elderly Asian Mass Shooters in California

      Jim Goad

      14

    • What Went Wrong with America’s Universities?

      Stephen Paul Foster

    • Greg Johnson Speaks to Horus the Avenger About Charles Krafft

      Greg Johnson

      2

    • A Woman’s Guide to Identifying Psychopaths, Part 6 The Most Common Jobs for Psychopaths

      James Dunphy

      9

    • Davos, or the Technocrats’ Ball

      Mark Gullick

      5

    • A Political Prisoner on the Meaning of January 6

      Morris van de Camp

      2

    • Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 520 Inside Serbia with Marko of Zentropa

      Counter-Currents Radio

    • The $50 Million Conservative Inc. Internet Spat

      Spencer J. Quinn

      14

    • Yet Another Woke Remake of a Classic

      Beau Albrecht

      25

    • Spencer J. Quinn & Pox Populi Discuss The No College Club

      Counter-Currents Radio

    • The Populist Moment, Chapter 11, Part 4: “Multitudes” Against the People

      Alain de Benoist

    • The Worst Week Yet: January 15-21, 2023

      Jim Goad

      35

    • Q&A with Jim Goad on The Redneck Manifesto

      Jason Kessler

      3

    • Against Political Hipsterism

      Nicholas R. Jeelvy

      6

    • The Populist Moment, Chapter 11, Part 3: “Multitudes” Against the People

      Alain de Benoist

    • Against White Unionism

      Greg Johnson

      7

    • Hitchcock vs. Visconti

      Derek Hawthorne

      9

    • 40% Off Selected Titles

      Cyan Quinn

      3

    • The Populist Moment, Chapter 11, Part 2: “Multitudes” Against the People

      Alain de Benoist

    • Public Transit in Multicultural Hell

      Gunnar Alfredsson

      12

    • No, You Wasn’t Kings

      Jim Goad

      36

    • The 2022 Counter-Currents Fall Retreat James Edwards & Sam Dickson on White Nationalism in Electoral Politics

      James Edwards & Sam Dickson

      1

    • The Populist Moment, Chapter 11, Part 1: “Multitudes” Against the People

      Alain de Benoist

      1

    • On the Christian Question

      David Lewis

      78

    • Physician, Heal Thyself: The Persecution of Jordan Peterson

      Mark Gullick

      22

    • A Woman’s Guide to Identifying Psychopaths, Part 5 The Workplace

      James Dunphy

      1

    • The Secret of My Success

      Steven Clark

      2

    • We Are All Mr. Bridge

      Spencer J. Quinn

      26

    • Wokeism’s Loyal Evangelical Subjects

      Robert Hampton

      21

    • The Lie of Afrocentrism

      Morris van de Camp

      22

    • Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 519 An Update on South America on The Writers’ Bloc

      Counter-Currents Radio

      1

    • 2022 Fundraiser Final Tally

      Greg Johnson

      2

    • The Worst Week Yet: January 8-14, 2023

      Jim Goad

      24

    • The Populist Moment, Chapter 10, Part 2: The Ambiguity of “Communitarianism”

      Alain de Benoist

    • Martin Luther King, Jr. Day Resources at Counter-Currents

      Greg Johnson

      11

    • Před a po Táboru Svatých: k další tvorbě Jeana Raspaila

      Anonymous

    • Remembering Yukio Mishima:
      January 14, 1925–November 25, 1970

      Greg Johnson

      1

    • Morrissey: The Last Romantic Poet?

      Mark Gullick

      16

    • Universities & the Smell of Dead Fish

      Stephen Paul Foster

      7

    • The Populist Moment, Chapter 10, Part 1: The Ambiguity of “Communitarianism”

      Alain de Benoist

    • Remembering G. I. Gurdjieff: January 13, ca. 1866–October 29, 1949

      Collin Cleary

      2

    • Robin Hood Kills a Robber in the Hood

      Jim Goad

      53

    • Preppy Handbooks, or, The Hidden History of the P-Word

      Margot Metroland

      13

    • A Woman’s Guide to Identifying Psychopaths, Part 4 Demographics

      James Dunphy

      4

    • The Eternal Fedora

      Nicholas R. Jeelvy

      12

    • The Banned FOX News Report on Israel’s Role in 9/11

      Spencer J. Quinn

      12

    • Transcript of FOX News’ Banned Report on Israel & 9/11

      Spencer J. Quinn

    • Pox Populi on Greg Johnson’s “Against Imperialism”

      Counter-Currents Radio

      1

    • The Kennedy Assassination & Misreading Data

      Morris van de Camp

      18

  • Classics Corner

    • Posthuman Prospects:
      Artificial Intelligence, Fifth Generation Warfare, & Archeofuturism

      Christopher Pankhurst

      5

    • Earnest Sevier Cox:
      Advocate for the White Ethnostate

      Morris van de Camp

      15

    • Remembering Jack London
      (January 12, 1876–November 22, 1916)

      Greg Johnson

      2

    • Remembering Robinson Jeffers:
      January 10, 1887–January 20, 1962

      John Morgan

      3

    • Remembering Pierre Drieu La Rochelle:
      January 3, 1893–March 15, 1945

      Greg Johnson

    • Remembering Rudyard Kipling (December 30, 1865-January 18, 1936)

      Greg Johnson

      10

    • Restoring White Homelands

      Greg Johnson

      34

    • Remembering Hinton Rowan Helper

      Spencer J. Quinn

      11

    • What’s Wrong with Diversity?

      Greg Johnson

      10

    • Redefining the Mainstream

      Greg Johnson

      3

    • Edward Alsworth Ross:
      American Metapolitical Hero

      Morris van de Camp

      8

    • The Talented Mr. Ripley & Purple Noon

      Trevor Lynch

      19

    • Christmas & the Yuletide:
      Light in the Darkness

      William de Vere

      3

    • Thanksgiving Special 
      White Men Meet Indians:
      Jamestown & the Clash of Civilizations

      Thomas Jackson

    • Colin Wilson’s The Outsider

      Sir Oswald Mosley

      4

    • Dostoyevsky on the Jews

      William Pierce

      4

    • Jefferson &/or Mussolini, Part 1

      Ezra Pound

      5

    • I Listened to Chapo Trap House So You Don’t Have To

      Doug Huntington

      98

    • The Homeric Gods

      Mark Dyal

      13

    • Toward a Baltic-Black Sea Union:
      “Intermarium” as a Viable Model for White Revival

      Émile Durand

      55

    • The Politics of Nuclear War, Part 3

      John Morgan

      30

    • The Politics of Nuclear War, Part 2

      John Morgan

      6

    • Columbus Day Special
      The Autochthony Argument

      Greg Johnson

      9

    • The Politics of Nuclear War, Part 1

      John Morgan

      8

    • The Jewish Question for Normies

      Alan Smithee

      13

    • Human Biodiversity for Normies

      Alan Smithee

      10

    • Bring Back Prohibition!

      Alan Smithee

      65

    • Ethnonationalism for Normies
      (Or, “On the Sense of Coming Home”)

      Alan Smithee

      8

    • Enemy & Exemplar:
      Savitri Devi on Paul of Tarsus

      R. G. Fowler

      10

    • Mars & Hephaestus: The Return of History

      Guillaume Faye

      3

  • Paroled from the Paywall

    • Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 514 The Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, & Yet to Come on The Writers’ Bloc

      Counter-Currents Radio

    • Race & the Bible

      Morris van de Camp

      2

    • PK van der Byl, African Statesman

      Margot Metroland

      3

    • Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 513 The Writers’ Bloc with Horus on the Implicit Whiteness of Liberalism

      Counter-Currents Radio

      4

    • Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 512 Jim Goad on Answer Me!

      Counter-Currents Radio

      3

    • Cleese on Creativity

      Greg Johnson

      6

    • A Woman’s Guide to Identifying Psychopaths, Part 1 Diagnostic Criteria, Associated Personality Disorders, & Brain Attributes

      James Dunphy

      6

    • Death of a Gadfly:
      Plato’s Apology

      Mark Gullick

      1

    • The Populist Moment, Chapter 8:
      Ernesto Laclau & Left-Wing Populism

      Alain de Benoist

    • Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 511
      Christmas Lore with Hwitgeard on The Writers’ Bloc

      Counter-Currents Radio

    • Bringing Guns to an Idea Fight:
      The Career of Robert DePugh

      Morris van de Camp

      4

    • War Is Our Father

      Gunnar Alfredsson

    • The Foremost Threat to Life on Earth

      James Dunphy

      2

    • Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 510
      The Writers’ Bloc with Jason Kessler on the Kanye Question

      Counter-Currents Radio

    • Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 509
      New Ask Me Anything with Greg Johnson

      Counter-Currents Radio

      6

    • The Problem of Gentile Zionism

      Nicholas R. Jeelvy

      1

    • The Populist Moment, Chapter 7:
      Money & the Right

      Alain de Benoist

      2

    • The Populist Moment, Chapter 6:
      Liberalism & Morality

      Alain de Benoist

    • Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 507
      The Best Month Ever on The Writers’ Bloc with Anthony Bavaria

      Counter-Currents Radio

    • Who Is Not Going to Save the Nation?

      Beau Albrecht

      4

    • J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Fall of Númenor

      Alex Graham

      3

    • The Most Overlooked Christmas Carols

      Buck Hunter

      4

    • Mirko Savage, Mother Europe’s Son

      Ondrej Mann

      3

    • Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 506
      The Writers’ Bloc with Jim Goad on J. D. Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy

      Counter-Currents Radio

      2

    • Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 505
      Mark Weber on the Perils of Empire

      Counter-Currents Radio

      3

    • Karl Pearson’s “The Groundwork of Eugenics”

      Spencer J. Quinn

      6

    • Toward a New Political Cosmogony for The Republic

      Nicholas R. Jeelvy

      4

    • Revolution of the Nation

      Sir Oswald Mosley

    • Drudkh’s All Belong to the Night

      Alex Graham

      3

    • Hordes at the Gate, Traitors Within, & a Home Newly Found

      Gunnar Alfredsson

      3

  • Recent comments

    • The Antichomsky

      A Woman’s Guide to Identifying Psychopaths, Part 6 The Most Common Jobs for Psychopaths

      Right.  A lot of the claimed stats — e.g. 20 percent of CEOs are psychopaths — are dubious on...

    • DarkPlato

      Yet Another Woke Remake of a Classic

      But it makes you feel sorry for them.  They were meant to run free on the Savannah.  I...

    • Scott

      Yet Another Woke Remake of a Classic

      Turu the Terrible was a gud boi ─ he dindu nuffin. :-)

    • Gene Yamnaya

      Greg Johnson Speaks to Horus the Avenger About Charles Krafft

      I miss him a lot. And... Everything Greg said about libraries is true.  

    • The Antichomsky

      A Woman’s Guide to Identifying Psychopaths, Part 6 The Most Common Jobs for Psychopaths

      If leftists could think, they might conclude that the main role of the police is protecting...

    • Bob Roberts

      The Silent Plague of Elderly Asian Mass Shooters in California

      Agreed, there may have been an issue where the gun snapped. We need more stringent gun control...

    • FKA Max

      The Silent Plague of Elderly Asian Mass Shooters in California

      Asian males (~60%) are carriers of the low-activity variants of the MAO-A allele (mostly the 3-...

    • Shift

      The Silent Plague of Elderly Asian Mass Shooters in California

      It's not a raughing matter.

    • Shift

      The Silent Plague of Elderly Asian Mass Shooters in California

      You know darn well what the issue is: gun violence.  Those goddam things keep going off.

    • Fire Walk With Lee

      The Silent Plague of Elderly Asian Mass Shooters in California

      The Occidental Observer is a great resource.

    • Phil Eiger Newmann

      The Silent Plague of Elderly Asian Mass Shooters in California

      This article was a real eye-opener. (rimshot)

    • J Webb

      Silicon Valley’s Anti-White Racial Dysgenics Program

      Companies do respond in part to demands of the market. If enough people are dissatisfied with the...

    • Bob Roberts

      The Silent Plague of Elderly Asian Mass Shooters in California

      ...San Mateo County Sheriff Christina Corpus said, “There was something that happened where he...

    • P Gage

      A Woman’s Guide to Identifying Psychopaths, Part 6 The Most Common Jobs for Psychopaths

      There is an over emphasis whether people are psychopaths or not. What is more common is having some...

    • Joe Gould

      Greg Johnson Speaks to Horus the Avenger About Charles Krafft

      We are acting like a network and a culture. That's good.

    • Jim Goad

      Silicon Valley’s Anti-White Racial Dysgenics Program

      When it comes to marriage stats at least, the most common interracial couple is a white guy with an...

    • Shift

      The Silent Plague of Elderly Asian Mass Shooters in California

      I'm reminded of Seattle's Wah Mee massacre in 1983. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

    • ingrainedQuark

      Silicon Valley’s Anti-White Racial Dysgenics Program

      Just stop using online dating apps. Seriously. Male users are at least double than female users...

    • Fire Walk With Lee

      The Silent Plague of Elderly Asian Mass Shooters in California

      Wow, that looks terrible.  I’ll have to hunt that one down.My favorite film with Michelle Yeoh...

    • Fire Walk With Lee

      Davos, or the Technocrats’ Ball

      If you’re dead set on trying to take over the world, it’s probably best to leave the cult leader...

  • Book Authors

    • Alain de Benoist
    • Anthony M. Ludovici
    • Beau Albrecht
    • Buttercup Dew
    • Charles Krafft
    • Christopher Pankhurst
    • Collin Cleary
    • F. Roger Devlin
    • Fenek Solère
    • Francis Parker Yockey
    • Greg Johnson
    • Gregory Hood
    • H. L. Mencken
    • Irmin Vinson
    • J. A. Nicholl
    • James J. O’Meara
    • Jef Costello
    • Jim Goad
    • Jonathan Bowden
    • Juleigh Howard-Hobson
    • Julius Evola
    • Kerry Bolton
    • Leo Yankevich
    • Michael Polignano
    • Multiple authors
    • Savitri Devi
    • Spencer J. Quinn
    • Tito Perdue
    • Trevor Lynch
  • Webzine Authors

    Contemporary authors

    • Howe Abbott-Hiss
    • Beau Albrecht
    • Aquilonius
    • Anthony Bavaria
    • Michael Bell
    • Alain de Benoist
    • Kerry Bolton
    • Jonathan Bowden
    • Buttercup Dew
    • Collin Cleary
    • Giles Corey
    • Jef Costello
    • Morris V. de Camp
    • F. Roger Devlin
    • Bain Dewitt
    • Jack Donovan
    • Ricardo Duchesne
    • Émile Durand
    • Guillaume Durocher
    • Mark Dyal
    • Guillaume Faye
    • Stephen Paul Foster
    • Fullmoon Ancestry
    • Jim Goad
    • Tom Goodrich
    • Alex Graham
    • Mark Gullick
    • Andrew Hamilton
    • Robert Hampton
    • Huntley Haverstock
    • Derek Hawthorne
    • Gregory Hood
    • Juleigh Howard-Hobson
    • Richard Houck
    • Alexander Jacob
    • Nicholas R. Jeelvy
    • Greg Johnson
    • Ruuben Kaalep
    • Tobias Langdon
    • Julian Langness
    • Travis LeBlanc
    • Patrick Le Brun
    • Trevor Lynch
    • Kevin MacDonald
    • G. A. Malvicini
    • John Michael McCloughlin
    • Margot Metroland
    • Millennial Woes
    • John Morgan
    • James J. O'Meara
    • Michael O'Meara
    • Christopher Pankhurst
    • Michael Polignano
    • J. J. Przybylski
    • Spencer J. Quinn
    • Quintilian
    • Edouard Rix
    • C. B. Robertson
    • C. F. Robinson
    • Hervé Ryssen
    • Kathryn S.
    • Alan Smithee
    • Fenek Solère
    • Ann Sterzinger
    • Thomas Steuben
    • Robert Steuckers
    • Tomislav Sunić
    • Donald Thoresen
    • Marian Van Court
    • Dominique Venner
    • Irmin Vinson
    • Michael Walker
    • Aylmer Wedgwood
    • Scott Weisswald
    • Leo Yankevich

    Classic Authors

    • Maurice Bardèche
    • Julius Evola
    • Ernst Jünger
    • D. H. Lawrence
    • Charles Lindbergh
    • Jack London
    • H. P. Lovecraft
    • Anthony M. Ludovici
    • Sir Oswald Mosley
    • National Vanguard
    • Friedrich Nietzsche
    • Revilo Oliver
    • William Pierce
    • Ezra Pound
    • Saint-Loup
    • Savitri Devi
    • Carl Schmitt
    • Miguel Serrano
    • Oswald Spengler
    • P. R. Stephensen
    • Jean Thiriart
    • John Tyndall
    • Francis Parker Yockey
  • Departments

    • Book Reviews
    • Movie Reviews
    • TV Reviews
    • Music Reviews
    • Art Criticism
    • Graphic Novels & Comics
    • Video Game Reviews
    • Fiction
    • Poems
    • Interviews
    • Videos
    • English Translations
    • Other Languages
      • Arabic
      • Bulgarian
      • Croatian
      • Czech
      • Danish
      • Dutch
      • Estonian
      • Finnish
      • French
      • German
      • Greek
      • Hungarian
      • Italian
      • Lithuanian
      • Norwegian
      • Polish
      • Portuguese
      • Romanian
      • Russian
      • Slovak
      • Spanish
      • Swedish
      • Ukrainian
    • Commemorations
    • Why We Write
  • Archives
  • Top 100 Commenters
  • Private Events
  • T&C
  • Contact
Sponsored Links
Above Time Coffee Antelope Hill Publishing Paul Waggener IHR-Store Asatru Folk Assembly Breakey Imperium Press American Renaissance The Patrick Ryan Show Jim Goad The Occidental Observer
Print March 5, 2013 8 comments

Bryan Magee’s Aspects of Wagner

Greg Johnson

mageeaspects2,373 words

Bryan Magee
Aspects of Wagner
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988

In preparation for the Wagner bicentennial on May 22, I have been listening to, watching, and reading about Wagner non-stop. But one’s enjoyment of art and ideas is magnified by sharing them with others. So I am going to get you in the Wagner spirit, or drive you crazy trying, with a series of reviews and essays leading up to the week of May 22, when we will run a memorial symposium on “Our Wagner,” which will also be published as a book by Counter-Currents.

Bryan Magee’s Aspects of Wagner, a slender volume of 102 pages, is an ideal place to begin if you want to learn what the fuss is about Richard Wagner.

Magee, b. 1930, is a prolific British writer and broadcaster whose specialty is the popularization of philosophy. His excellent televised interviews with philosophers, conducted during the 1960s and ’70s, are now available on YouTube and have been transcribed and published as three books: Modern British Philosophy (London: Secker and Warburg, 1971), which is the best introduction to 20th-century analytic philosophy ever (it convinced me that I did not need to know more), The Great Philosophers: An Introduction to Western Philosophy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), which deals with the history of philosophy more broadly, and Talking Philosophy: Dialogues with Fifteen Leading Philosophers(a.k.a. Men of Ideas) (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982), which deals broadly with 20th-century philosophy, including Existentialism and the Frankfurt School. He is also the author of Philosophy and the Real World: An Introduction to Karl Popper (LaSalle, Ill.: Open Court Publishing, 1985).

Aside from Aspects of Wagner, my favorite books by Magee are his magisterial The Philosophy of Schopenhauer (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), his moving autobiography Confessions of a Philosopher (New York: Random House, 1998), and The Tristan Chord: Wagner and Philosophy (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2002), which I will review as well. (For more about Magee’s life and other works, see his Wikipedia page.)

Aspects of Wagner is in many ways Magee’s most remarkable book because it is a miracle of concision and clarity. For instance, the first chapter, “Wagner’s Theory of Opera,” distills the essence of Wagner’s theory of opera from a number of rather prolix and difficult books — The Art Work of the Future (1849), Art and Revolution (1849), Opera and Drama (1850–51), and A Message to My Friends (1851), among others — down to about 10 pages.

But before telling us what Wagner’s theory is, Magee notes that it is remarkable that Wagner worked out a theory of opera at all. Most composers before and since have not felt the need of an articulated theory of opera. Moreover, creating art and theorizing about it require very different cognitive skills, which are seldom, if ever, combined in the same person, or if they are, one faculty tends to be much weaker than another. Thus it is often the case that the greater the artist, the less he has of interest to say about his work. He is too busy creating it to reflect on it.

Wagner, then, was a unique phenomenon: a man who combined creativity and reflective theorizing in the same mind and excelled a both, although his artistic achievement is, of course, more significant.

Wagner believed that Greek tragedy was the pinnacle of human creative achievement, for five reasons: (1) it had unrivalled capacity for expression because it combined together a whole range of creative arts; (2) it derived its subject matter from myth, which has the capacity to move more people more deeply than any other form of storytelling; (3) it was religious in both its source materials and the occasions for its performance; (4) it was based on a this-worldly religion, a celebration of Earthly life; and (5) it involved the whole community.

Wagner did not deny that drama and especially music have progressed since ancient Athens. For Wagner, Shakespeare was a greater dramatist than Aeschylus and Sophocles, and Beethoven had developed the expressive power of music beyond anything in history. Modern opera, by combining modern music and modern drama, could and should be the greatest art form in world history. (By the same token, film now has even greater aesthetic potential than opera.)

For Wagner, the music in opera is analogous to the chorus in a Greek tragedy, which is ever-present and which tells us the meaning of the events on stage. But a chorus can only tell, whereas music–especially music since Beethoven–can give you a direct experience of the inner states of the characters. (Wagner was a great psychologist, who used myth and music to plumb the depths of the soul, anticipating many of the ideas of Freud and Jung.)

Wagner was, in short, the inventor of the “soundtrack,” meaning the seamless integration of music and drama that reveals the inner emotional states of the characters and other truths that could otherwise only be narrated — or conveyed wordlessly by a really good actor. The first composers for the movies utilized Wagnerian techniques, including distinct musical themes for characters, ideas, objects, and emotions. Thus my advice to someone who is seeing an opera for the first time is to think of it as a movie with a really good soundtrack. (As a first opera, I recommend only Puccini’s Tosca, although his La Bohème or Madame Butterfly will also serve.)

According to Wagner, modern opera consistently failed to attain the artistic and social significance of Greek Tragedy because its potential for synthesizing artforms and producing profound religious experiences for a whole community was blocked by the dualism that gave rise to Christian otherworldiness and profane secular modernity, the elitism that made opera a preserve of bourgeois and aristocratic society, the commercialism that makes opera a privately traded commodity rather than a sacred experience shared by the whole community, and the cynicism of composers who sought to enrich themselves by pandering to their audience’s vulgarity and vices, thus becoming accomplices in their corruption, rather than working to edify their tastes and characters.

Wagner was a revolutionary German nationalist and socialist. He was also a revolutionary artist. Wagner plotted social revolution to transform art. In 1849, he joined the anarchist Mikhail Bakunin in the Dresden uprising. When the revolution collapsed, Wagner fled into exile and spent the next six years plotting an artistic revolution to transform society.

After six years devoted to producing a series of theoretical books and essays, Wagner began composing Der Ring des Nibelungen, his first attempt to fuse the artistic unity, mythic subject matter, this-worldly religiosity, and social significance of Greek tragedy with the expressive power of modern music. He went on to compose Tristan and Isolde, The Mastersingers of Nuremberg, and Parsifal in the same vein. (For an actual marriage of Shakespeare and Wagnerian composing techniques, see Verdi’s late masterpiece Otello.)

Based on the Völsunga Saga and the Nibelungenlied, the Ring is a cycle of four operas, some 16 hours of music played over four nights (usually with days off for the singers after the second and third installments), which begins with the origins of the cosmos and ends with the fiery destruction of the Norse gods and the inauguration of the age of man. It is Feuerbachian humanism and revolutionary nationalism and socialism set to music, although by the time Wagner finished it, his revolutionary ardor had been cooled by maturity and the cold, hard cash showered upon him by royal patrons.

But it was not enough for Wagner merely to compose these operas. In order to establish their social/religious significance and insure the best possible performances, Wagner built his own opera house and created a regular international festival for the performance of his works in the Bavarian town of Bayreuth. To this day, the Bayreuth Festival is the center of an international Wagner cult run by Wagner’s descendants.

It was a stunningly ambitious, not to say megalomaniacal, project which Wagner nevertheless achieved through superhuman creative and organizational labors. His goal was not just to change the opera world but the whole world, and in many ways he succeeded. As Magee puts it, “Wagner has had a greater influence than any other single artist on the culture of our age” (p. 56).

In chapter 3, “Wagnerolatry,” Magee entertainingly surveys the extraordinary extremes of adulation and hostility that Wagner provoked during his lifetime and still provokes today. According to Magee, the key to both responses is the fact that Wagner’s music stirs deep, repressed emotions, an experience which some people experience as a threat and others as a liberation.

In chapter 4, “The Influence of Wagner,” Magee briefly surveys Wagner’s influence in music, literature, poetry, the visual arts, and the performance of classical music and opera. For instance, Wagner was the prime inspiration of the Symbolist movement in French literature — and more through his theoretical writings than his operas. Wagner also inspired the novelist Edouard Dujardin to introduce the interior monologue into the novel, intending it to play the same role in literature as the Wagnerian orchestra played in opera (pp. 47–48).

Wagner was not just a musical and theoretical genius. He also permanently changed the way operas and classical music are performed. Before Wagner, operas were performed in lighted houses so that people could dine, play cards and dice, gossip, and come and go as they pleased during the performances. Wagner was the first composer/conductor to dim the house lights, close doors to latecomers, and insist that audiences remain absolutely silent, reserving their applause to the end of acts. Wagner invented new lighting techniques, backdrops on sliding panels, the steam curtain, and many other innovations in stagecraft. He was also a brilliant actor and mime who coached and rehearsed singers meticulously and left copious notes for future performers. Finally, Wagner revolutionized the conducting of classical music, creating through his writings and direct teaching the tradition of the imperious “star” conductor that continues to this day.

Chapter 5, “Wagner in Performance,” and chapter 6, ” Wagner as Music,” masterfully ease the reader into actually listening to Wagner, which is the whole point anyway. I will share my own recommendations at a future date.

I saved Chapter 2, “Jews–Not Least in Music,” for last, because it should have been relegated to an appendix. The reason why it is chapter 2 is simple: Aspects of Wagner is a labor of love, and the main impediment today to loving Wagner is the issue of anti-Semitism, thus Magee evidently felt it must be cleared away as quickly as possible. Wagner was an anti-Semite in both senses of the word: he hated Jews and Jews hated him. It did not help matters that Wagner was Adolf Hitler’s favorite composer. Hitler was a personal friend of the Wagner family and a generous patron of Bayreuth and Wagner performance in general.

Of course Wagner has not said an unkind word about Jews since his death in 1883, but Jews have not remained silent. In spite of the fact that many Jews are passionate lovers of Wagner’s music, including Jewish conductors like George Solti, Daniel Barenboim, and James Levine who are among Wagner’s most skilled interpreters and advocates, attacking Wagner is still a minor Jewish industry, regularly churning out books and articles and maintaining a steady cultural background whine of indictment. To this day, there is an unofficial ban on performing Wagner in Israel.

Wagner made no bones about the fact that his anti-Semitism was based on bitter personal experiences with Jews. But Magee shows that there were matters of deep principle involved as well. For Wagner, authentic art was related to a particular culture and tradition and could only be created by somebody steeped in that tradition since birth. Thus in his pamphlet Judaism in Music (1850) and related writings, Wagner accused Jewish composers like Mendelssohn, Meyerbeer, and Halévy of creating shallow, inauthentic, meretricious music because as Jews, they were foreign to the European musical traditions and European culture more broadly and instead took their bearings from the business of producing commercially successful, popular entertainment. Wagner also indicted the Jewish-dominated press of his time for promoting their co-ethnics while consigning better composers to obscurity, poverty, and heartbreaking struggles like Wagner endured in Paris in his early years.

Magee presents Wagner’s case in the most compelling terms possible and then argues that Wagner’ mistake was not to see that his argument only applied to a particular period in time, for when Wagner wrote European Jews had only been emancipated from the ghettos and from their religious traditions for a few decades. But, as Magee argues, as Jews became more integrated into European society, they became better able to carry forward the European musical tradition in an authentic manner and produce great works of their own. So, Magee concludes, Wagner’s argument was right in its time, but history has moved on, so it is no longer valid.

As an apologia, Magee’s argument is skillfully constructed and doubtless highly effective. But is it true? As I see it, the chief flaws in Magee’s argument are (1) he seeks to reduce all differences between Jews and Europeans to historical contingencies, even going so far as to attribute Jewish overrepresentation among high achievers to cultural factors rather than natural factors like higher average IQ, (2) he puts too much emphasis on religion as a defining characteristic of Jewishness, to the point that he almost seems committed to the position that a secular Jew is not a Jew at all, and (3) the only real example of a Jewish composer who fully assimilated the Western musical tradition and produced works of genuine greatness is Mahler. As far as Western music is concerned, Schoenberg was more of a decomposer.

If Jewish identity is older and more enduring than the Jewish religion, then mere secularization will not lead to Jewish assimilation. Indeed, if there is an enduring biological substratum to Jewish identity, then as long as Jews and Europeans remain distinct biological populations, there will be real cultural differences as well, including differences in music, in which case Wagner’s account of Jewishness in music has an enduringly valid core.

The best evidence that Aspects of Wagner is a highly stimulating work is that I have read it four times since I first bought it in 1997, and it has inspired a review that is about one tenth the length of the book itself. So let the next words you read about Wagner be by Magee himself.

 

Related

  • Greg Johnson Speaks to Horus the Avenger About Charles Krafft

  • A Political Prisoner on the Meaning of January 6

  • Against White Unionism

  • On the Christian Question

  • We Are All Mr. Bridge

  • Martin Luther King, Jr. Day Resources at Counter-Currents

  • Remembering Yukio Mishima:
    January 14, 1925–November 25, 1970

  • Preppy Handbooks, or, The Hidden History of the P-Word

Tags

book reviewsBryan Mageeclassical musicdramaGreg JohnsonoperaRichard Wagnerthe Jewish questionWagner Bicentennial Symposium

Next

» The Heroes Who Failed 
Gangster Squad

8 comments

  1. m says:
    March 6, 2013 at 6:29 am

    In spite of the fact that many Jews are passionate lovers of Wagner’s music, including Jewish conductors like George Solti, Daniel Barenboim, and James Levine who are among Wagner’s most skilled interpreters…

    Generally, since the end of the war, second-rate producers have bent over backwards to sully the works of Wagner–especially Ring productions; called Eurotrash in more traditional opera circles. His own family are at the head of his list. Ironically, the best “faithful” Ring staging on film is the James Levine/Otto Schenk/Met production from the 1980s. Some may be taken aback by the pace of Levine’s conducting, the generally “clinical” sound of the DGG studio recording (the live video soundtrack is a bit different), and the made for TV aspect ratio which is distinctly inferior to wide screen. But at least Wotan is not dressed up like a one-eyed space alien, Hagen is not a skid row alcoholic, and the Valkyries are not depicted as SS troops.

    Do not overlook Keilberth’s original stereo recording on Testament, the Kannpertsbusch, Bohm, and Furtwangler (the latter with not so good sound quality). Solti, for the usual reasons, is the one that is pushed uber alles, and what most people start out with, probably. Wagner is an expensive hobby.

    1. Stronza says:
      March 9, 2013 at 10:53 pm

      Shouldn’t that be “Knappertsbusch”?

  2. Micronaut says:
    March 6, 2013 at 1:07 pm

    I’ve often wondered at the near complete domination by Jewish talent of Broadway and Tin Pan Alley. Cole Porter is the only nonJewish figure. Are we nonJews simply unable to compete? How does one explain this phenomenon? No one ever makes similar complaints to those of Wagner in the US.

  3. White Republican says:
    March 20, 2013 at 7:41 am

    M. Owen Lee’s Wagner’s Ring: Turning the Sky Round might be another little book worth reviewing. I haven’t read it myself, but William Pierce highly recommended it and sold it through National Vanguard Books, and it seems to be very highly rated as an introduction to the Ring cycle.

    1. Greg Johnson says:
      March 20, 2013 at 4:24 pm

      Yes, I plan to review it. Thanks.

  4. Christopher P says:
    April 1, 2013 at 11:42 am

    Was the cover design of Kerry Bolton’s Artists of the Right deliberately intended to echo the cover of Aspects of Wagner or was it an unconscious homage?

    1. Greg Johnson says:
      April 1, 2013 at 4:42 pm

      I don’t think it was either, since I don’t think the designer ever saw the book. Besides, my edition has a different cover. I did not see the new cover until I put the review online.

Comments are closed.

If you have Paywall access,
simply login first to see your comment auto-approved.

Note on comments privacy & moderation

Your email is never published nor shared.

Comments are moderated. If you don't see your comment, please be patient. If approved, it will appear here soon. Do not post your comment a second time.

  • Recent posts

    • Silicon Valley’s Anti-White Racial Dysgenics Program

      Jason Kessler

      4

    • The Silent Plague of Elderly Asian Mass Shooters in California

      Jim Goad

      14

    • What Went Wrong with America’s Universities?

      Stephen Paul Foster

    • Greg Johnson Speaks to Horus the Avenger About Charles Krafft

      Greg Johnson

      2

    • A Woman’s Guide to Identifying Psychopaths, Part 6 The Most Common Jobs for Psychopaths

      James Dunphy

      9

    • Davos, or the Technocrats’ Ball

      Mark Gullick

      5

    • A Political Prisoner on the Meaning of January 6

      Morris van de Camp

      2

    • Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 520 Inside Serbia with Marko of Zentropa

      Counter-Currents Radio

    • The $50 Million Conservative Inc. Internet Spat

      Spencer J. Quinn

      14

    • Yet Another Woke Remake of a Classic

      Beau Albrecht

      25

    • Spencer J. Quinn & Pox Populi Discuss The No College Club

      Counter-Currents Radio

    • The Populist Moment, Chapter 11, Part 4: “Multitudes” Against the People

      Alain de Benoist

    • The Worst Week Yet: January 15-21, 2023

      Jim Goad

      35

    • Q&A with Jim Goad on The Redneck Manifesto

      Jason Kessler

      3

    • Against Political Hipsterism

      Nicholas R. Jeelvy

      6

    • The Populist Moment, Chapter 11, Part 3: “Multitudes” Against the People

      Alain de Benoist

    • Against White Unionism

      Greg Johnson

      7

    • Hitchcock vs. Visconti

      Derek Hawthorne

      9

    • 40% Off Selected Titles

      Cyan Quinn

      3

    • The Populist Moment, Chapter 11, Part 2: “Multitudes” Against the People

      Alain de Benoist

    • Public Transit in Multicultural Hell

      Gunnar Alfredsson

      12

    • No, You Wasn’t Kings

      Jim Goad

      36

    • The 2022 Counter-Currents Fall Retreat James Edwards & Sam Dickson on White Nationalism in Electoral Politics

      James Edwards & Sam Dickson

      1

    • The Populist Moment, Chapter 11, Part 1: “Multitudes” Against the People

      Alain de Benoist

      1

    • On the Christian Question

      David Lewis

      78

    • Physician, Heal Thyself: The Persecution of Jordan Peterson

      Mark Gullick

      22

    • A Woman’s Guide to Identifying Psychopaths, Part 5 The Workplace

      James Dunphy

      1

    • The Secret of My Success

      Steven Clark

      2

    • We Are All Mr. Bridge

      Spencer J. Quinn

      26

    • Wokeism’s Loyal Evangelical Subjects

      Robert Hampton

      21

    • The Lie of Afrocentrism

      Morris van de Camp

      22

    • Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 519 An Update on South America on The Writers’ Bloc

      Counter-Currents Radio

      1

    • 2022 Fundraiser Final Tally

      Greg Johnson

      2

    • The Worst Week Yet: January 8-14, 2023

      Jim Goad

      24

    • The Populist Moment, Chapter 10, Part 2: The Ambiguity of “Communitarianism”

      Alain de Benoist

    • Martin Luther King, Jr. Day Resources at Counter-Currents

      Greg Johnson

      11

    • Před a po Táboru Svatých: k další tvorbě Jeana Raspaila

      Anonymous

    • Remembering Yukio Mishima:
      January 14, 1925–November 25, 1970

      Greg Johnson

      1

    • Morrissey: The Last Romantic Poet?

      Mark Gullick

      16

    • Universities & the Smell of Dead Fish

      Stephen Paul Foster

      7

    • The Populist Moment, Chapter 10, Part 1: The Ambiguity of “Communitarianism”

      Alain de Benoist

    • Remembering G. I. Gurdjieff: January 13, ca. 1866–October 29, 1949

      Collin Cleary

      2

    • Robin Hood Kills a Robber in the Hood

      Jim Goad

      53

    • Preppy Handbooks, or, The Hidden History of the P-Word

      Margot Metroland

      13

    • A Woman’s Guide to Identifying Psychopaths, Part 4 Demographics

      James Dunphy

      4

    • The Eternal Fedora

      Nicholas R. Jeelvy

      12

    • The Banned FOX News Report on Israel’s Role in 9/11

      Spencer J. Quinn

      12

    • Transcript of FOX News’ Banned Report on Israel & 9/11

      Spencer J. Quinn

    • Pox Populi on Greg Johnson’s “Against Imperialism”

      Counter-Currents Radio

      1

    • The Kennedy Assassination & Misreading Data

      Morris van de Camp

      18

  • Classics Corner

    • Posthuman Prospects:
      Artificial Intelligence, Fifth Generation Warfare, & Archeofuturism

      Christopher Pankhurst

      5

    • Earnest Sevier Cox:
      Advocate for the White Ethnostate

      Morris van de Camp

      15

    • Remembering Jack London
      (January 12, 1876–November 22, 1916)

      Greg Johnson

      2

    • Remembering Robinson Jeffers:
      January 10, 1887–January 20, 1962

      John Morgan

      3

    • Remembering Pierre Drieu La Rochelle:
      January 3, 1893–March 15, 1945

      Greg Johnson

    • Remembering Rudyard Kipling (December 30, 1865-January 18, 1936)

      Greg Johnson

      10

    • Restoring White Homelands

      Greg Johnson

      34

    • Remembering Hinton Rowan Helper

      Spencer J. Quinn

      11

    • What’s Wrong with Diversity?

      Greg Johnson

      10

    • Redefining the Mainstream

      Greg Johnson

      3

    • Edward Alsworth Ross:
      American Metapolitical Hero

      Morris van de Camp

      8

    • The Talented Mr. Ripley & Purple Noon

      Trevor Lynch

      19

    • Christmas & the Yuletide:
      Light in the Darkness

      William de Vere

      3

    • Thanksgiving Special 
      White Men Meet Indians:
      Jamestown & the Clash of Civilizations

      Thomas Jackson

    • Colin Wilson’s The Outsider

      Sir Oswald Mosley

      4

    • Dostoyevsky on the Jews

      William Pierce

      4

    • Jefferson &/or Mussolini, Part 1

      Ezra Pound

      5

    • I Listened to Chapo Trap House So You Don’t Have To

      Doug Huntington

      98

    • The Homeric Gods

      Mark Dyal

      13

    • Toward a Baltic-Black Sea Union:
      “Intermarium” as a Viable Model for White Revival

      Émile Durand

      55

    • The Politics of Nuclear War, Part 3

      John Morgan

      30

    • The Politics of Nuclear War, Part 2

      John Morgan

      6

    • Columbus Day Special
      The Autochthony Argument

      Greg Johnson

      9

    • The Politics of Nuclear War, Part 1

      John Morgan

      8

    • The Jewish Question for Normies

      Alan Smithee

      13

    • Human Biodiversity for Normies

      Alan Smithee

      10

    • Bring Back Prohibition!

      Alan Smithee

      65

    • Ethnonationalism for Normies
      (Or, “On the Sense of Coming Home”)

      Alan Smithee

      8

    • Enemy & Exemplar:
      Savitri Devi on Paul of Tarsus

      R. G. Fowler

      10

    • Mars & Hephaestus: The Return of History

      Guillaume Faye

      3

  • Paroled from the Paywall

    • Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 514 The Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, & Yet to Come on The Writers’ Bloc

      Counter-Currents Radio

    • Race & the Bible

      Morris van de Camp

      2

    • PK van der Byl, African Statesman

      Margot Metroland

      3

    • Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 513 The Writers’ Bloc with Horus on the Implicit Whiteness of Liberalism

      Counter-Currents Radio

      4

    • Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 512 Jim Goad on Answer Me!

      Counter-Currents Radio

      3

    • Cleese on Creativity

      Greg Johnson

      6

    • A Woman’s Guide to Identifying Psychopaths, Part 1 Diagnostic Criteria, Associated Personality Disorders, & Brain Attributes

      James Dunphy

      6

    • Death of a Gadfly:
      Plato’s Apology

      Mark Gullick

      1

    • The Populist Moment, Chapter 8:
      Ernesto Laclau & Left-Wing Populism

      Alain de Benoist

    • Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 511
      Christmas Lore with Hwitgeard on The Writers’ Bloc

      Counter-Currents Radio

    • Bringing Guns to an Idea Fight:
      The Career of Robert DePugh

      Morris van de Camp

      4

    • War Is Our Father

      Gunnar Alfredsson

    • The Foremost Threat to Life on Earth

      James Dunphy

      2

    • Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 510
      The Writers’ Bloc with Jason Kessler on the Kanye Question

      Counter-Currents Radio

    • Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 509
      New Ask Me Anything with Greg Johnson

      Counter-Currents Radio

      6

    • The Problem of Gentile Zionism

      Nicholas R. Jeelvy

      1

    • The Populist Moment, Chapter 7:
      Money & the Right

      Alain de Benoist

      2

    • The Populist Moment, Chapter 6:
      Liberalism & Morality

      Alain de Benoist

    • Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 507
      The Best Month Ever on The Writers’ Bloc with Anthony Bavaria

      Counter-Currents Radio

    • Who Is Not Going to Save the Nation?

      Beau Albrecht

      4

    • J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Fall of Númenor

      Alex Graham

      3

    • The Most Overlooked Christmas Carols

      Buck Hunter

      4

    • Mirko Savage, Mother Europe’s Son

      Ondrej Mann

      3

    • Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 506
      The Writers’ Bloc with Jim Goad on J. D. Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy

      Counter-Currents Radio

      2

    • Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 505
      Mark Weber on the Perils of Empire

      Counter-Currents Radio

      3

    • Karl Pearson’s “The Groundwork of Eugenics”

      Spencer J. Quinn

      6

    • Toward a New Political Cosmogony for The Republic

      Nicholas R. Jeelvy

      4

    • Revolution of the Nation

      Sir Oswald Mosley

    • Drudkh’s All Belong to the Night

      Alex Graham

      3

    • Hordes at the Gate, Traitors Within, & a Home Newly Found

      Gunnar Alfredsson

      3

  • Recent comments

    • The Antichomsky

      A Woman’s Guide to Identifying Psychopaths, Part 6 The Most Common Jobs for Psychopaths

      Right.  A lot of the claimed stats — e.g. 20 percent of CEOs are psychopaths — are dubious on...

    • DarkPlato

      Yet Another Woke Remake of a Classic

      But it makes you feel sorry for them.  They were meant to run free on the Savannah.  I...

    • Scott

      Yet Another Woke Remake of a Classic

      Turu the Terrible was a gud boi ─ he dindu nuffin. :-)

    • Gene Yamnaya

      Greg Johnson Speaks to Horus the Avenger About Charles Krafft

      I miss him a lot. And... Everything Greg said about libraries is true.  

    • The Antichomsky

      A Woman’s Guide to Identifying Psychopaths, Part 6 The Most Common Jobs for Psychopaths

      If leftists could think, they might conclude that the main role of the police is protecting...

    • Bob Roberts

      The Silent Plague of Elderly Asian Mass Shooters in California

      Agreed, there may have been an issue where the gun snapped. We need more stringent gun control...

    • FKA Max

      The Silent Plague of Elderly Asian Mass Shooters in California

      Asian males (~60%) are carriers of the low-activity variants of the MAO-A allele (mostly the 3-...

    • Shift

      The Silent Plague of Elderly Asian Mass Shooters in California

      It's not a raughing matter.

    • Shift

      The Silent Plague of Elderly Asian Mass Shooters in California

      You know darn well what the issue is: gun violence.  Those goddam things keep going off.

    • Fire Walk With Lee

      The Silent Plague of Elderly Asian Mass Shooters in California

      The Occidental Observer is a great resource.

    • Phil Eiger Newmann

      The Silent Plague of Elderly Asian Mass Shooters in California

      This article was a real eye-opener. (rimshot)

    • J Webb

      Silicon Valley’s Anti-White Racial Dysgenics Program

      Companies do respond in part to demands of the market. If enough people are dissatisfied with the...

    • Bob Roberts

      The Silent Plague of Elderly Asian Mass Shooters in California

      ...San Mateo County Sheriff Christina Corpus said, “There was something that happened where he...

    • P Gage

      A Woman’s Guide to Identifying Psychopaths, Part 6 The Most Common Jobs for Psychopaths

      There is an over emphasis whether people are psychopaths or not. What is more common is having some...

    • Joe Gould

      Greg Johnson Speaks to Horus the Avenger About Charles Krafft

      We are acting like a network and a culture. That's good.

    • Jim Goad

      Silicon Valley’s Anti-White Racial Dysgenics Program

      When it comes to marriage stats at least, the most common interracial couple is a white guy with an...

    • Shift

      The Silent Plague of Elderly Asian Mass Shooters in California

      I'm reminded of Seattle's Wah Mee massacre in 1983. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

    • ingrainedQuark

      Silicon Valley’s Anti-White Racial Dysgenics Program

      Just stop using online dating apps. Seriously. Male users are at least double than female users...

    • Fire Walk With Lee

      The Silent Plague of Elderly Asian Mass Shooters in California

      Wow, that looks terrible.  I’ll have to hunt that one down.My favorite film with Michelle Yeoh...

    • Fire Walk With Lee

      Davos, or the Technocrats’ Ball

      If you’re dead set on trying to take over the world, it’s probably best to leave the cult leader...

  • Book Authors

    • Alain de Benoist
    • Anthony M. Ludovici
    • Beau Albrecht
    • Buttercup Dew
    • Charles Krafft
    • Christopher Pankhurst
    • Collin Cleary
    • F. Roger Devlin
    • Fenek Solère
    • Francis Parker Yockey
    • Greg Johnson
    • Gregory Hood
    • H. L. Mencken
    • Irmin Vinson
    • J. A. Nicholl
    • James J. O’Meara
    • Jef Costello
    • Jim Goad
    • Jonathan Bowden
    • Juleigh Howard-Hobson
    • Julius Evola
    • Kerry Bolton
    • Leo Yankevich
    • Michael Polignano
    • Multiple authors
    • Savitri Devi
    • Spencer J. Quinn
    • Tito Perdue
    • Trevor Lynch
  • Webzine Authors

    Contemporary authors

    • Howe Abbott-Hiss
    • Beau Albrecht
    • Aquilonius
    • Anthony Bavaria
    • Michael Bell
    • Alain de Benoist
    • Kerry Bolton
    • Jonathan Bowden
    • Buttercup Dew
    • Collin Cleary
    • Giles Corey
    • Jef Costello
    • Morris V. de Camp
    • F. Roger Devlin
    • Bain Dewitt
    • Jack Donovan
    • Ricardo Duchesne
    • Émile Durand
    • Guillaume Durocher
    • Mark Dyal
    • Guillaume Faye
    • Stephen Paul Foster
    • Fullmoon Ancestry
    • Jim Goad
    • Tom Goodrich
    • Alex Graham
    • Mark Gullick
    • Andrew Hamilton
    • Robert Hampton
    • Huntley Haverstock
    • Derek Hawthorne
    • Gregory Hood
    • Juleigh Howard-Hobson
    • Richard Houck
    • Alexander Jacob
    • Nicholas R. Jeelvy
    • Greg Johnson
    • Ruuben Kaalep
    • Tobias Langdon
    • Julian Langness
    • Travis LeBlanc
    • Patrick Le Brun
    • Trevor Lynch
    • Kevin MacDonald
    • G. A. Malvicini
    • John Michael McCloughlin
    • Margot Metroland
    • Millennial Woes
    • John Morgan
    • James J. O'Meara
    • Michael O'Meara
    • Christopher Pankhurst
    • Michael Polignano
    • J. J. Przybylski
    • Spencer J. Quinn
    • Quintilian
    • Edouard Rix
    • C. B. Robertson
    • C. F. Robinson
    • Hervé Ryssen
    • Kathryn S.
    • Alan Smithee
    • Fenek Solère
    • Ann Sterzinger
    • Thomas Steuben
    • Robert Steuckers
    • Tomislav Sunić
    • Donald Thoresen
    • Marian Van Court
    • Dominique Venner
    • Irmin Vinson
    • Michael Walker
    • Aylmer Wedgwood
    • Scott Weisswald
    • Leo Yankevich

    Classic Authors

    • Maurice Bardèche
    • Julius Evola
    • Ernst Jünger
    • D. H. Lawrence
    • Charles Lindbergh
    • Jack London
    • H. P. Lovecraft
    • Anthony M. Ludovici
    • Sir Oswald Mosley
    • National Vanguard
    • Friedrich Nietzsche
    • Revilo Oliver
    • William Pierce
    • Ezra Pound
    • Saint-Loup
    • Savitri Devi
    • Carl Schmitt
    • Miguel Serrano
    • Oswald Spengler
    • P. R. Stephensen
    • Jean Thiriart
    • John Tyndall
    • Francis Parker Yockey
  • Departments

    • Book Reviews
    • Movie Reviews
    • TV Reviews
    • Music Reviews
    • Art Criticism
    • Graphic Novels & Comics
    • Video Game Reviews
    • Fiction
    • Poems
    • Interviews
    • Videos
    • English Translations
    • Other Languages
      • Arabic
      • Bulgarian
      • Croatian
      • Czech
      • Danish
      • Dutch
      • Estonian
      • Finnish
      • French
      • German
      • Greek
      • Hungarian
      • Italian
      • Lithuanian
      • Norwegian
      • Polish
      • Portuguese
      • Romanian
      • Russian
      • Slovak
      • Spanish
      • Swedish
      • Ukrainian
    • Commemorations
    • Why We Write
  • Archives
  • Top 100 Commenters
Sponsored Links
Above Time Coffee Antelope Hill Publishing Paul Waggener IHR-Store Asatru Folk Assembly Breakey Imperium Press American Renaissance The Patrick Ryan Show Jim Goad The Occidental Observer
Editor-in-Chief
Greg Johnson
Books for sale
  • El Manifiesto Nacionalista Blanco
  • An Artist of the Right
  • Ernst Jünger
  • Reuben
  • The Partisan
  • Trevor Lynch’s Classics of Right-Wing Cinema
  • The Enemy of Europe
  • Imperium
  • Reactionary Modernism
  • Manifesto del Nazionalismo Bianco
  • O Manifesto Nacionalista Branco
  • Vade Mecum
  • Whiteness: The Original Sin
  • Space Vixen Trek Episode 17: Tomorrow the Stars
  • The Year America Died
  • Passing the Buck
  • Mysticism After Modernism
  • Gold in the Furnace
  • Defiance
  • Forever & Ever
  • Wagner’s Ring & the Germanic Tradition
  • Resistance
  • Materials for All Future Historians
  • Love Song of the Australopiths
  • White Identity Politics
  • Here’s the Thing
  • Trevor Lynch: Part Four of the Trilogy
  • Graduate School with Heidegger
  • It’s Okay to Be White
  • The World in Flames
  • The White Nationalist Manifesto
  • From Plato to Postmodernism
  • The Gizmo
  • Return of the Son of Trevor Lynch’s CENSORED Guide to the Movies
  • Toward a New Nationalism
  • The Smut Book
  • The Alternative Right
  • My Nationalist Pony
  • Dark Right: Batman Viewed From the Right
  • The Philatelist
  • Confessions of an Anti-Feminist
  • East and West
  • Though We Be Dead, Yet Our Day Will Come
  • White Like You
  • Numinous Machines
  • Venus and Her Thugs
  • Cynosura
  • North American New Right, vol. 2
  • You Asked For It
  • More Artists of the Right
  • Extremists: Studies in Metapolitics
  • The Homo & the Negro
  • Rising
  • The Importance of James Bond
  • In Defense of Prejudice
  • Confessions of a Reluctant Hater (2nd ed.)
  • The Hypocrisies of Heaven
  • Waking Up from the American Dream
  • Green Nazis in Space!
  • Truth, Justice, and a Nice White Country
  • Heidegger in Chicago
  • End of an Era: Mad Men & the Ordeal of Civility
  • Sexual Utopia in Power
  • What is a Rune? & Other Essays
  • Son of Trevor Lynch’s White Nationalist Guide to the Movies
  • The Lightning & the Sun
  • The Eldritch Evola
  • Western Civilization Bites Back
  • New Right vs. Old Right
  • Journey Late at Night: Poems and Translations
  • The Non-Hindu Indians & Indian Unity
  • I do not belong to the Baader-Meinhof Group
  • Pulp Fascism
  • The Lost Philosopher
  • Trevor Lynch’s A White Nationalist Guide to the Movies
  • And Time Rolls On
  • Artists of the Right: Resisting Decadence
  • North American New Right, Vol. 1
  • Some Thoughts on Hitler
  • Tikkun Olam and Other Poems
  • Summoning the Gods
  • Taking Our Own Side
  • Reuben
  • The Node
  • The New Austerities
  • Morning Crafts
  • The Passing of a Profit & Other Forgotten Stories
Copyright © 2023 Counter-Currents Publishing, Ltd.

Paywall Access





Please enter your email address. You will receive mail with link to set new password.

Edit your comment